... that site in which writerly production meets intellectual validation or condemnation, vociferous public debate and political denunciation. It is this site, this authorial marker that is presumably on view in “The Kidnapping,” a divertingly eccentric, often comically absurd movie about a novelist, also named Michel Houellebecq, who finds something like happiness after being abducted.

The apparent genesis for “Kidnapping” can be traced to 2011, when Mr. Houellebecq briefly went missing without explanation while promoting his novel “The Map and the Territory.” Rumors swirled, including one that he had been snatched by Al Qaeda. This proved false: “Michel Houellebecq has not been captured by Al Qaeda,” one news outfit assured anxious readers. Enter the French filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux, who, casually blurring nonfiction with fiction and shooting in remarkably ugly digital, has created a distinct, insistently light version of that disappearance. This lightness is especially strange, as is the movie’s comedy, which together make a dissonant counterpart to the now-familiar, deadly kidnappings by the likes of the Islamic State.

The heaviness of the real world isn’t evident on screen; it just swirls around “The Kidnapping,” seeping through the cracks and into your consciousness. It opens unceremoniously with Michel, as our protagonist is known, speaking with another middle-aged man about an apartment renovation. Seated at a table, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes, the men chat idly and to no evident narrative end. And so it goes for a while as Michel wanders here and there, speaks with other intimates and keeps things entertainingly hopping with his observations about J.G. Ballard, so-called Swedish fascism and Le Corbusier’s “concentration camp” architecture. And then three kidnappers corner Michel and — after pausing to see what he’s reading (Tocqueville) — sweep him off to the countryside.